It's Watch!... Neighborhood Watch. Not shoot.

1) The state politicized this thing, took it away from the local prosecutor and the police, then overcharged it, and by most accounts tried to ramrod the defense with it's better resources. O'Mara is still planning a disciplinary proceeding, and if the prosecutor forced them into hours of endless time chasing basic discovery and piling up bills just to get a fair trial, I hope there are ramifications. That is government abuse -- which is far too common, but maybe will have ramifications for once because this was so high profile.

2) In response to the "worst high-profile prosecution" ever, it's the OJ case by a mile. This was an impossible case to prove. What made the state case so inept was that they actually went forward with it the way they did, and then seemed to proceed with a general arrogance and belief that they could scream their way to a verdict -- that passion would rule the day, rather than actually proving guilt with a factual case. That is amateur hour, and I am sure there are prosecutors who do their jobs well who were shaking their heads at the case they put on.

3) I watched this thinking that based on the actual law, that jury SHOULD HAVE been found not guilty. I also think the law sucks -- and this is going to get disagreement from the people who will just disagree with me. ... about consequences for your actions, about the absolutely stupid, senseless, gun culture in this country, etc.

This should have been a manslaughter prosecution from what I learned about Florida law, and even then, it would have been a tough case. But one with a chance, at least -- made harder in Florida by the "stand your ground" law -- which I think is really a "create dead bodies without consequences because we are a nation of gun nuts" law.

What sucks, is that my sense of right and wrong still tells me that Zimmerman killed the kid and there should be a consequence for that. If you are not the walking around with a gun, this just doesn't happen. Even using the defense's narrative, let's say a creepy Zimmerman was following Martin, and Martin being a dumb kid full of bravado, got in his face and ended up pummeling Zimmerman. Stupid fights happen every day. Without the gun anywhere near the scene, at worst we have an ass kicking of some sort, but two people alive.

Instead, we have an idiot walking around with a gun -- which can only lead to a BAD outcome -- and a dead kid -- whatever the character of Trayvon Martin was. That is the tragedy here. I really thought Zimmerman should have done jail time, not in a "lock him up and throw away the key" way, but because he killed someone, it all seemed so avoidable, and there should be a consequence for killing someone when you were the one who introduced a gun to a fight you seemed to actively been seeking with your actions. But the law didn't seem to give allowance for that common sense (at least to me) outcome.

I guess the consequence will have to be the long trial he went through, the stress and the negative consequences the publicity around the trial is likely going to create for his life. He got to walk, but I personally don't feel sympathy for him. He killed someone. And the law -- stand your ground, even just the basic castle doctrine without it being extended to give every moron without common sense the ability to carry a deadly weapon and have a chance to walk free if there is a confrontation that leads to THEM introducing a gun and creating a dead body -- is one really fucked up thing about certain places in this country.

4) I really get the feeling that the state attorney general thought it could use the power of its office to steamroll this thing, and it may have played dirty pool with the rules of evidence disclosure. Its arrogance clearly hurt the case. They politicized the case, took it away from the local prosecutors -- where it belonged -- and threw the police department under the bus. For once, it seemed like a police force actually did a decent investigation.

I think those police detectives were relishing getting even for their being scapegoated, being demoted and getting run over by politicians, and they used their testimony to help the defense. How do you try a murder case and have the cops actually testifying that they believe the defendant's version? How do you expect to win that case, EXCEPT by getting a jury full of idiots (which happens)?

I have a man crush on Mark O'Mara. He took a prosecution in which he was outresourced and actually turned the tables on the fuckwits. He put on a better case than the prosecution did, when all they really had to do -- in the narrow sense of the law -- was create reasonable doubt. The defense was actually playing offense, and at times from the clips I saw, it was more unbelievable than a Perry Mason episode. The prosecutor opened the door with its weak, overcharged case, and maybe lots of other good attorneys could have pulled that off, but how many could have screwed it up too?

I didn't know the intricacies of Florida law when this happened, but I knew that you had a moron walking around with a gun and a dead kid. I thought there should have been SOME charge. Even if it would have been a tough case to win, because of the "Every idiot has a right to walk around with a gun, basically looking for trouble, and claim self defense when they kill someone" law that rules Florida. Either way, though, any prosecutor's office should have been tripping all over itself to indict for SOMETHING when there is a dead body and they know who did it. That is what prosecutors do! People get indicted really easily for much smaller things in this country. A dead body and them knowing who did it should not have sat in limbo for six weeks, the way it did. And then it shouldn't have turned into a politicized circus -- which led to it being overcharged and ineptly prosecuted with politicians running the show.

At the end of the day, this will have little consequence for any of our lives beyond the high-profile nature and parlor talk, but really, for me, America loses because of all the stupidity -- from the original death, the irrational love of guns in this country and the shitty laws it leads to, and the power of a state government to take something that could have been a straightforward, simple trial about truth and turn it into a politicized mess.

 

Hokie, I don't see a problem with anyone having weakened the right to self defense you said you stand for. I see it having become ridiculously expansive -- which is how we end up with this. I believe I remember reading that the number of "self defense" deaths in Florida has tripled since the "stand your ground" law.

I personally would outlaw all handguns -- and more importantly, get people to stop being so damned gun happy (nothing good happens when people have guns), if I could. But even without that, if you are going to claim self defense, I really believe the standard should be there was no other way possible, and that there should be a burden on you to prove some kind of proportion between the way you defended yourself and the gravity of the actual attack you were defending yourself against. Otherwise, we have a moronic gun-happy country, with tacit justification for every idiot who gets into a bar fight to act like Quick Draw McGraw. Or in this case, for a stupid wannabe superhero to get himself into a deadly situation that was just unnecessary.

 

There wasn't anything straightforward or simple in practice, as I pointed out in my long-winded post. What I said, though, is it COULD have been.

The incident was the incident. It wasn't that complicated -- you could believe any particular narrative, but the narratives didn't dispute a lot factually, even if you drew different conclusions from the facts based on the small amount of gray area.

Factually, this was a lot simpler than most criminal cases. These things weren't disputed -- at least seriously. You had the neighborhood watch idiot. You had him walking around with a loaded gun. You had a kid he was trailing -- justifiably or not (there is nothing illegal about following someone, though). You had the recorded 911 call. Cries for help in the background. End result: Zimmerman with what looked like a few beat down injuries. A dead kid. We know who killed the kid. We know the basic timeline of how it happened.

How much more simple does it get than that?

The problem was the mess they made of it -- taking it from that straightforward set of undisputed into a political shitstorm -- that ended up with a horrible attempt at a second-degree murder prosecution. You can blame outside influences, but this is our justice system. It's their job NOT to let those outside influences dictate justice. That didn't happen. So once you had politicians running the show, you had them overcharging it, trying to ramrod the defense by making discovery more difficult than it typically is, etc.

If this had just been handled like nearly every other case -- the police investigate, a district attorney motivated the way that most district attorneys are (dead body, you know who did it, you indict for SOMETHING) and politicians staying out of it, it would have been tried as manslaughter. A straightforward discovery process. The local DA prosecuting based on those facts that we know.

Then it's a matter of whether he acted in self-defense under the stand your ground law (stupid law in my opinion, but it's the law. So be it.).

There was none of that in the prosecution's case. They took that simple and straightforward manslaughter case -- in which they didn't have to look ridiculous -- and turned it into an overcharged crappy prosecution taken out of the hands of the locals (who were thrown under the bus, and got their revenge on the witness stand) that stood no chance, rather than some chance.